Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Fiction and Imagination: Introduction [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 11 • Author/s: Carola Barbero, Matteo Plebani, Alberto Voltolini
Topics: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind

Simulation Modelling in Fiction [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 11 • Author/s: Conrad Aquilina
Topics: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of science

This essay assesses the claim that model structures have features in common with narratology and fiction-making. It proposes that simulation—a form of modelling—is amenable to literary narratives which are hypermimetic, in the sense that their cognitive or material reception by the reader demands a phenomenology attained through the heightening of a mimetic secondary reality. Simulation models construct frames of reference for target systems through self-validating mechanisms, and the same is true of narratology. I specifically argue that the modelling of a world out of text, one which is written and…

Contexts: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Context (But Were Afraid to Ask) [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Diana Mazzarella, Antonio Negro, Carlo Penco
Topics: Introduction, Meta-Philosophy, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

We give a short recap of how the notion of context has been developed in the philosophy of language since its introduction by Frege. We introduce various aspects of the concept of context: context of utterance, context at the semantics-pragmatics boundary, and social and cognitive context. We thereby offer to readers not accustomed to the distinctions used in the philosophy of language a framework to better understand the papers enclosed in this issue (and of which we provide summaries at the end of this introduction).

Opening Up New (and Old) Vistas on the Contextualist-Minimalist Debate [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Ernesto Perini-Santos
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

The border war between semantics and pragmatics has an early version in the dispute between Mates and Cavell. While Mates argues for a strict separation between semantic inferences and mere pragmatic regularities, Cavell argues for a “logic of ordinary language”, identifying the commitments following the act of saying something. This answer gives a clue to the contemporary debate between minimalists and contextualists: we may either think that pragmatic inferences are only effective after the proposition is grasped, or think that it is part of the determination of what is said.…

Believing the Formless? [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Giuseppe Varnier, Salvatore Pistoia-Reda
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

In this note, we discuss the analyticity puzzle affecting the logicality of language hypothesis. The analyticity puzzle is the fact that only some analyticities result in ungrammaticality, which seems to conflict with the idea that an inferential device plays a role in determining the set of the possible sentences of the language. The literature includes two solutions to account for this puzzling evidence. According to one of the solutions, the deductive system can access both ungrammatical and grammatical trivialities, though only the latter can be rescued, i.e. made informative, via…

Scalar Implicatures and Presupposition of Existence: Strawson-entailment and the Grammatical Theory [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Aldair Díaz-Gómez
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

Two strong contenders for scalar implicature (SI) computation are the pragmatic and the grammatical theories. While the former sustains that context plays a major role, the latter suggests context is required but is lexically and monotonically constrained (Chierchia 2012). In particular, this paper discusses a processing account for SIs that is dependent on the satisfaction of the Strawsonian presupposition of existence, necessary for the realization of the asymmetric entailment pattern among relevant alternatives. This observation complies with the principles of the grammatical view, for it predicts SIs in the presence…

Conscious Experiences as Ultimate Seemings: Renewing the Phenomenal Concept Strategy [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 02 • Author/s: François Kammerer
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of mind

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy is a popular strategy used to support physicalism in the realm of conscious experience. This Strategy accounts for dualist intuitions but uses the ways in which we think about our experiences to explain these intuitions in a physicalist framework, without any appeal to ontological dualism. In this paper, I will raise two issues related to the currently available versions of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. First, most of the theories belonging to the Phenomenal Concept Strategy posit that phenomenal concepts are exceptional and sui generis concepts, and…

Williamson on the psychological view [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 02 • Author/s: Serena Maria Nicoli
Topics: Epistemology, Meta-Philosophy, Philosophy of mind

What is the nature of the evidence provided by thinking about hypothetical cases, such as those presented in the thought experiments (TE)? Is it psychological, as those who speak about intuitions seem to think, or not? This problem is closely related to that of the nature of the subject matter of philosophy, that most philosophers tend to conceive as non-psychological. Williamson’s position on the matter (Williamson 2007) consists in rejecting the psychological view on intuitions: if we want this method—the armchair method—to provide us with evidence in favour or contra…

Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 02 • Author/s: Giacomo Melis
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind

I extend the Higher-Order View of Undermining Defeat (HOVUD) defended in Melis (2014) to account for the defeat of propositional justification. In doing so, I also clarify the important notion of higher-order commitment, and I make some considerations concerning the defeat of externalist epistemic warrants.

The Debate on the Problem of For-Me-Ness: A Proposed Taxonomy

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Alberto Barbieri
Topics: Cognitive science, Epistemology, Philosophy of mind

Several philosophers claim that a mental state is phenomenally conscious only if it exhibits so-called for-me-ness, or subjective character, i.e., the fact that there is something it is like to be in a conscious state not just for everyone but only for the subject who undergoes it. Consequently, they stress, a proper explanation of consciousness requires to address the question of what the nature of for-me-ness is. This question forms what I call the problem of for-me-ness. Although the debate on the problem of for-me-ness has assumed a centre stage…
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